Why Two IIT Engineers Turned Down $550K Jobs To Build A Startup

Varun Vummadi is the co-founder of Giga, which builds AI agents for customer support for some of the biggest companies in the world, including DoorDash, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the US, and a top-three global telecom provider. At Startup School India, Varun sat down YC General Partner Ankit Gupta to talk about why he turned down a high-paying quant job to start a company, the multiple pivots it took to find the right problem, and how their small team of eight beat a 400-person competitor to land a contract with DoorDash. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs Chapters: 00:00 — Intro 01:33 — Early Days & Origin Story 03:37 — The YC Interview Disaster 06:28 — Pivoting Away From Ed Tech 07:25 — Finding the Real Idea 08:39 — Beating a Well-Funded Competitor 10:00 — Winning DoorDash at 8 People 11:09 — What GigaML Looks Like Now 12:40 — Advice for College Students 15:51 — Why Charge Early? 17:33 — The Next Big Bet 18:43 — Running the Company on AI 20:19 — How They Hire Engineers 22:04 — Product Over Sales 23:37 — Burn the Boats + Outro